even hell runs on money
by yousoullessfuck
Summary: Yusuke Urameshi, thrice born, dread son of Raizen, scion of suffering, battlegod supreme, and still total shit at this whole "talking about his feelings" thing. (Oneshots, YusukeHiei to start, assorted characters and pairings to follow.)


Yusuke does not know where Hiei got the knife.

One listless, practiced motion after another - he tosses it up, it comes down. Hiei always catches it at the hilt without fail, and knowing the fire demon's homicidal tendencies Yusuke's positive he's just playing Russian Roulette with his fingers at this point. The metal gleams with the kind of menace that makes Yusuke think it's probably sharp enough to split a strand of hair clean down the middle.

The tiny demon is perched on a windowsill of one of the countless rooms in Yusuke's swank-ass castle. Hokushin had told him the size of the place had less to do with dear dead Daddy wanting to flaunt his (probably looted and conquered) wealth and more to do with the fact that Raizen apparently, once upon a time, threw the kind of parties that would've made better demons come crawling to Enma for reprieve, mercy, and a heavenly hangover-helper.

That was all before he met Yusuke's creepyass great-great-ad-infinitum grandma, dumped his ex-girlfriend Kokou, and somehow managed to turn the whole palace on its head into some kind of monastery or sanctuary or whatever.

Yusuke still hasn't asked for all the details on that. He's not sure if he wants to.

And now here he stands, the Greatest Descendant, his hip cocked and pressed against the unyielding stone of the windowsill Hiei always claims without fail, because he's a paranoid old man who refuses to be in any position where he can't keep a near 360-degree visual on his surroundings. Even if it means contorting his tiny, shitty body into spaces that have never asked or wanted to be occupied.

Yusuke, of course, is not blowing precious brain-cells on observing the way Hiei's ankle turns in on the ledge, or noticing that his hair has started getting unruly-long at the nape again (any longer and he'll have one of those ugly mullets he's seen on Kuwabara's Megallica posters).

No, Yusuke is most definitely looking at The Knife.

"What," says Hiei, and he never presents anything like a question, does he? Hiei wears words like barbs on his tongue even for the people he likes - and Yusuke figures Hiei likes him, knows Hiei went headfirst into battle with Sensui just so he'd feel a little better about Yusuke's cooling corpse, knows that Hiei sometimes looks at him like he's not altogether sure that he's still there, still real.

Hiei is not looking at The Knife. Hiei is looking right at him.

Yusuke watches the graceful little arc of the blade up - down. Hiei catches the hilt. Hiei's wrist cocks upward. The knife cuts circles through the air again, toss perfectly calculated. Yusuke's positive if he tried counting the rotations they'd be the same every time. Everyone thinks Hiei's a total wildcard, but he's easily one of the most anal-retentive, neurotic, shitty little perfectionists Yusuke knows.

"Dude," Yusuke is counting, against his better judgement. One, two, three- "how old are you anyway? Or is that rude as fuck to ask? Hokushin and the monks just straight up told me, but I dunno if that's 'cuz they think I'm their boss."

"Why do you care?" And there's the Threat, it's so fucking easy to catch it in Hiei's tone when everything he actually means to say hangs out around the words like a group of surly delinquents mean-mugging and shoving their hands in their pockets. _Why do you want to know, what would it change, why is it important, how do you intend to use this information? For me or against me?_

"I dunno I just thought you'd have some insight on this whole Second Demon Puberty shit I'm dealing with - I mean. You're at least younger than a hundred, right? Not like Yukina's popped out any babies or anything, Kuwabara would've told me by now. Doesn't that make you a teenager or something -" God, that would explain so much, "by Makai standards?"

There are two emotions that pass over Hiei's face then - a kind of bone-deep fury that always seems to flare up whenever he's caught off guard, and then the corner of his mouth twists in a moue that usually means he's given up the pretense of being too pissed off, just because it's Yusuke. He's been known to be full of surprises.

"Whatever the hell a _teenager_ is, I'm not it."

"Right, but I figured you were such a prick because of hormones or something and Kurama's had centuries to mellow the fuck out, you tellin' me you're honestly gonna be like this forever?"

Hiei's brows are furrowed to the point where the dense little wrinkle between the two looks like it's threatening to collapse in on itself, and his fingers actually close around the hilt when the dagger comes down this time. He holds it with all the casual care people would lend pencils, points it in Yusuke's face.

"If you want to keep your idiotic tongue in your head you'll shut up sooner rather than later."

Hiei should know better by now, know that threats just goad Yusuke into acting like more of a moron than he normally does, know that nothing makes Yusuke's day quite as much as getting on his nerves until maybe there's a fist in his face and a knee in his gut and Hiei almost _never_ fights hand to fucking hand (that time he'd saved Yusuke, the time he'd fought - saved? - Mukuro) so it's worth it, every word is fuel on his funeral pyre and he's okay with it.

(It's not like he won't find a way to cheat death again anyway.)

"Man," whistles Yusuke, "you gotta be kiddin' me, like you aren't bored as all hell without Kuwabara to talk your ears off, somebody's gotta think about the stability of this shitty team."

"What team," and there Hiei goes again, making Yusuke wonder if inflection was ever a necessary part of conversation - if he were feigning boredom any harder, his eyes would roll into the back of his head and he'd take a goddamn nap.

And it makes Yusuke want to fight him, tooth and fucking nail, argue till he's blue in the face and out of breath. As if team Urameshi hasn't been disbanded for decades. As if the Reikai Tantei wasn't technically dismantled with the new status of Yusuke's blood - as if Koenma hadn't put them perpetually on hiatus until some idiot was trying to fuck things up for all three worlds.

As if Kuwabara had actually been visiting Makai all this time, not entering his fucking golden years with his temples going gray and his once bleached-brassy-red hair now black.

 _Koenma's godawful team_ , Yusuke wants to say. _My team! My - whatever you were, all of you, mine but worse, mine but -_

Instead Yusuke's lips pucker, he clasps his hands at the side of his head and makes kissy-blowfish-faces in Hiei's direction with all the saccharine bullshit-syrup he can muster in his tone.

"No team with that attitude, shortfry. It's a matter of principle."

Hiei looks dubious as all hell, like he can't decide whether the word "principle" has any place in Yusuke's loveless mouth and isn't quite sure if Yusuke's even using it properly. Yusuke doesn't comment on how Hiei's a Real Team Player now that he doesn't constantly threaten to flay or murder any of his Best Buddies whenever they make a comment on him being vertically challenged.

The knife hasn't moved - Hiei has a very steady hand. _Statuesque_ , some corny voice in Yusuke's head says, only Hiei's knuckles are busted as fuck, his callouses have callouses and Yusuke's positive he's worn his nails - claws? - down just by doing stupid shit like scaling the stone walls of the palace to get up here in the first place, because the asshole was literally raised in the woods and probably never learned how to use a fucking door.

Yusuke hardly ever sees the other hand under the bandages, but he bets it's worse, and the thought makes his throat hot, gets something in his chest to twist.

Hiei's quiet, which is so fucking typical of Yusuke's life in this _stupid castle_ that he wants to rip his hair out. Nobody's doing much talking, and even when they are talking no one's really talking, and Yusuke's tired of it, of the infamous six-foot-wall of shit Genkai tried to beat out of him when he was a teenager, of how he fails at the most basic tasks over and over again.

"So are you just gonna stare at my mouth all day or what, man."

Hiei does move at that - the slightest jerk of the head, up. Yusuke knows he hates tilting his head too far back, hates acknowledging that any of them loom over him any more than he already has to.

Yusuke gives him a real saucy wink, "I mean we could make this way more interesting if you've got somethin' more fun in mind."

"Don't flatter yourself, I was trying to gauge whether it would be worth knocking your teeth out first."

"You still hung up on the whole cutting out my tongue thing?"

"I can see it fetching a hefty sum in-auction, at least."

"You really wanna make Yomi's day, huh?"

"Why would his feelings on it concern me."

"I 'unno, not like you care about money, y'little freak, but Yomi'd buy the poor thing out easy, and fuck knows what his creepy ass would do with it. If my tongue would score that much how much d'you think you'd get for my teeth? Or are you just gonna start wearin' them on a chain all special along with that necklace-"

Yusuke doesn't stop talking because of the flash in Hiei's freaky-as-fuck ruby eyes, but he does have a blade pointed right into his mouth mid-sentence. _In_ being the key word here, Hiei lowers his hand and presses the steel against the edges of Yusuke's lower row of teeth, the flat of the knife barely pressing against his tongue.

The edges are as sharp and potentially destructive as all of the questions he wants to ask Hiei. Stupid, awful shit - he wants to know why it feels like he never stops _changing_ but somehow stays the same. Yusuke wants to ask why he wants to grab the hair at the nape of Hiei's neck and yank on it, he wants to break every one of Hiei's fingers under his thumb, he wants to slit his belly and carve a line all the way up his sternum and push his hands in, under, where he knows it's warm, where it's hotter than his skin, where beneath his ribs and lungs and whatever other organs Hiei has that Yusuke's lacking, he's positive there's a core, some molten-hot centre that will kill him on impact and put him out of his fucking misery.

Maybe that's not a demon thing. Maybe Yusuke's just Really Fucked Up.

He presses his tongue up too far against the knife, slides sideways. His mouth is wet, ribbons of blood and the taste of copper and steel curling around his gums, a bitter-hot sting that curls in his stomach in equal parts elation and revulsion. He wants to throw up. He wants to kiss Hiei. He wants to get his tongue cleaved out and his teeth punched in and he wants to not _want_ anything anymore.

Maybe Hiei catches something in his expression, because he is giving him a real long, weird stare. He looks at the knife. He looks at Yusuke. He pulls the blade away, wipes it on the front of Yusuke's shirt.

Hiei leaves. Right out the fucking window.

Yusuke's gonna hand it to himself, he's at least managed the fine art of _restraint_. The pillows on his bed don't get incinerated on impact when he beats the fuck out of them - they just explode. Hokushin's hanging out in his doorway in a heartbeat, which Yusuke figures has something to do with the fact that the fucking King of Tourin, Son of His Lord, has been throwing at least a level eight tantrum - screaming wordlessly in frustration with the equivalent of a soggy, bloody sock in his mouth. There isn't a single piece of downy fluff on Hokushin anywhere, which is probably more than what can be said for Yusuke's overdramatic ass. He broke the bed-frame somehow. There's a very, very deep series of holes in the stone walls. Kurama'll piss himself laughing when Hiei inevitably tells him what happened.

"My lord? We were under the impression that you were entertaining a guest, what, if I might ask-?"

Yusuke spits out a gob of blood and feathers. His tongue is already on the mend.

"S'nothin'," there's a lisp, though, fucking Hiei.

* * *

A/N: About Hiei's age! Koorime give birth every century via parthenogenesis, it's never been suggested that Yukina has ever given birth. Hiei and Yukina are twins, so it stands to reason that they're both younger than a hundred. Hiei's right about not being a teenager, but he isn't exactly old by Makai standards either.

(Kuwabara was the one who told Yusuke, since Yukina let him know. Hiei's just unhappy that Yusuke has had access to more information about him than he'd like).


End file.
